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    • September 1, 2013 at 6:40 am #16420
      LY
      Member

      I have always been raised by my parents to achieve excellence in school and I basically had my life plan laid out ahead of me. I was to go to med school, graduate with a degree in neurology or something and basically just work until retirement. And up until now, I accepted it as how my life was going to run, but lately I’m having an existential crisis. I have no passion for medicine, or anything for that matter. I’m just overall neutral to every career that I’ve heard of, so I have no real interest in anything. There’s nothing that makes me want to drop everything and pursue that one thing for the rest of my life. Becoming a doctor is a great ambition that I wouldn’t mind doing, but then again, if you gave me any other options, I would feel the same way and that scares the hell out of me
      I don’t want to live a life that I’m ly nothing else other than the good income. It’s a superficial and dull way to live, and I don’t want to be just an empty shell with no interests.
      The problem is, what should I do then? My mind has been engraved with the thought of “I HAVE to good to a good uni” and “I HAVE to get a good job”, so right now, everything I do just seems fake. For example, I applied for various volunteer activitiea and while I do enjoy it, in the back of my mind the annoying little voice saying “I’m doing this because it’ll look good on a resume.or a uni application”. Even when I’m reading a book, I read classics because I think “I NEED to read it to seem smart”. I know it’s stupid and fake for me to think that way, and I really do try to not be so shallow to do something only for a resume or the approval of others but I do anyways. I want to get rid of that feeling so much because number one, it’s unhealthy and two, I’ll never be truly happy if I make decisions for other people’s opinion. And honestly, who the hell cares about where some average, middle class girl volunteered at or what she read? Nobody, so why am I still bothering? I guess thait there’s also a narcissistic, arrogant part of me that’s telling me that they would bother acknowledging what petty, insignificant things I’ve done so far.

      I know that on this site there are people with problems a lot worse than mine and I’m just being a whiny, confused teenager just like all the other ones out there. I just really needed a place to vent, so thanks for letting me do that I guess.

    • September 4, 2013 at 4:43 am #18843
      Youthspace
      Moderator

      Hi LY, welcome aboard. :)

      I think that a lot of what you have said here would resonate with many, and that you expressed your feelings in a very real and contemplative manner. Don’t think that your comments are out of place here because other people have “worse” problems — partly because we think that if what you are feeling is big for you, then it IS big (even if it might not seem that way to others), and partly because your voice is valued for adding a story, a perspective. If you need a place to vent, feel free to let it all out here!

      And I think that what you’re talking about here is a huge matter, because, as you said, it is existential. I get that for a long time, you’ve been dutifully following the path that you were expected to follow. It seems that you’ve reached a point, though, where you just had to stop and ask yourself “why am I doing this? Does it matter to me at all?” Those kinds of questions can create some pretty massive upheaval in our lives, and it sounds like it has left you doubting not only what you have already done, but what you had planned to do as well. Perhaps even who you are? I can hear how frightening it is to find that so many things that might have felt stable seem to be shifting…

      I admire that you value having interests as well as an income, and that you desire for your work to have some meaning to you. Even in the confusion and uncertainty, I get the sense that there are some core values that you hold close to yourself. If a close friend of yours was telling you that they were doubting the path that had been laid out for them, and were expressing some of the feelings that you have shared with us here, what do you think you might tell them?

      Here for your venting and philosophizing,
      The Support Team

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